Was that the teleprompter fielding questions?

Now there's something you don't see every day, Chauncey.  Reporters are actually fact checking President Obama -- the AP, no less.  Here we have Associated Press reporters dissecting President Obama's press conference statements:

'A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years." - in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months - a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.

The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.

Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.'

I did not watch the entire performance, preferring the Red Sox over the White House and switching to FOX between innings.  It was in the post press conference commentary that I noticed something I thought was odd.

Among the press conference video clips that provided backdrop to the post conference commentary, there were a couple showing the president's audience.  And there in the center of the audience was a large teleprompter with text scrolling up.  At the time, there was no audio with the video clip since we were listening to Bill O'Reilly's critique.  We could have been watching the the delivery of the president's opening remarks.

However, O'Reilly had already made the point that the press conference was well scripted and well timed.  In 55 minutes Obama answered only 13 questions.  And I noticed that, when Obama picked on reporters to ask their questions he quite obviously read their names off of a list.  Now, it wouldn't be the first time a president screened questions that would be permitted at a press conference.  But realizing that Obama had prepared a list of reporters going in, I wouldn't be at all surpised if he had his teleprompter loaded for talking points as well -- all lined up so that he could respond "spontaneously" to each question in the order it appeared on his list.